Max Berliner

Max BERLINER (born on September 24^th, 1883 in Sereth, Bukowina/Austro-Hungarian Empire [Siret/Romania]), was the son of Adolf Berliner (retired civil servant), graduated in 1904 from the state grammar school (Staatsgymnasium) in Czernowitz, Bukowina/Austro-Hungarian Empire [Чернівці|Tscherniwzi, Ukraine]) and studied medicine at the University of Vienna from 1904/05 (partly with the help of scholarships from the Johann von Seyfert Foundation and the Medical School). He was a member (later "Alter Herr") of the Jewish Academic Association "Unitas" Vienna.

Max Berliner had graduated from the Medical School of the University of Vienna on February 9^th, 1910 with the academic degree "Dr. med.univ.". He was already a demonstrator and aspirant at the University Children's Clinic in Vienna and specialized in internal medicine. He became a member of the Vienna Medical Association and became a secondary physician at the Wilhelminenspital in 1910. He also worked as an assistant doctor at the Purkersdorf Sanatorium before being appointed chief physician at the Hütteldorf-Hacking Park Sanatorium in 1913. At the beginning of the First World War, he set up a military hospital in part of it and was also chief physician at the reserve hospital no. 15 until 1918.

He married Gertrude, née Wedriner (divorced Schlesinger, 1881-1963) in Vienna in March 1920 - she was the administrative manager of the Purkersdorf Sanatorium - and brought two children into the marriage, and their son Walter was born in 1921.
In July 1927, Max Berliner moved from the Hütteldorf-Hacking Sanatorium to the Westend Sanatorium in Purkersdorf as Chief Physician, was honored with the title "Medizinalrat" by the Federal President in February 1932 and was also appointed Chief Physician of the Park Sanatorium in Perchtoldsdorf in October 1933. In October 1936, he again took over as director and chief physician of the Hütteldorf-Hacking Park Sanatorium.

Immediately after the Anschluss, Max Berliner and his family had to flee Vienna in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. The contacts of his patients - including the Vienna police president, Queen Maria of Romania, King Peter of Yugoslavia and other influential personalities in Austria and Europe - helped him here. Max Berliner and his family were evicted from the apartment in the director's villa in the Hütteldorf Sanatorium in Vienna's 13^th district, Vinzenz Hess Gasse 29; he himself was arrested, but was quickly released. The family lived in Vienna's 6^th district, Mariahilfer Strasse 47/3 from July to October until the Yugoslavian royal family made it possible for them to flee to Yugoslavia with his wife, son and stepdaughter. After a few months they were able to travel from there to Menton, in the south of France, where they lived for a year before emigrating to Great Britain in the face of the threat of war, where the family settled near London in Asthead, Surrey, Great Britain. Max Berliner was appointed medical director - and his wife administrative director - of all the hostels for Jewish refugees and displaced persons (DPs) in England that had been founded by the Jewish aid organization "Bloomsbury House" at the time.
His son Walter Berliner was interned as an "enemy alien" on the Isle of Man in 1940, later deported to India on the infamous ship "Dunera", from where he was able to emigrate to the USA in 1941 with the help of the Red Cross and the support of Ernest Pollitzer. Walter Berliner joined the US Army, returned to Europe as an intelligence officer, became an American, married in Frankfurt in 1947 and returned with her to New York, bringing his family from England to the USA after the death of his father.

As a result of their successful escape, Max Berliner, his wife and his son were stripped of their German citizenship by the German Reich on January 11^th, 1941 for racist reasons and all their assets were confiscated. Both were announced in the German Reich Gazette No. 12 of January 15^th, 1941 and, as a further consequence, he was also stripped of his academic doctorate by the University of Vienna on May 8^th, 1941, as he was considered "unworthy of an academic degree from a German university as a Jew" under National Socialism.

It was not until 62 years after the revocation and long after the end of National Socialism that his doctorate was solemnly restored on April 10^th, 2003, and the revocation was posthumously declared "null and void from the outset".

Max Berliner died on March 29^th, 1947 in Leatherland, Surrey/England and is buried at Hoop Lane Cemetery, Golders Green, London.
However, this was not known in Austria, which is why death certificate proceedings ("Toterklärungsverfahren") were initiated in 1965, as there were also indications that he may have been deported and murdered. In the absence of a specific date of death, he was therefore officially declared dead in 1965/66 and the official date of death was set as December 31^st, 1943. This is why the dates 1943 and 1965 are sometimes used as the year of death in literature or in commemoration and remembrance projects, e.g. in the memory project "Remembering for the Future", which laid memorial stones in memory of 24 deported and murdered residents of Vienna-Mariahilf, including one at Mariahilfer Straße 47 for Max Berliner with the date of death 1943, and on the memorial plaque in the Perchtoldsdorf Sanatorium (today: OptimaMed Rehabilitation Center Perchtoldsdorf) for the doctors expelled there under National Socialism, where Max Berliner's date of death is given as 1965.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna, graduation registry ("Pormotionsprotokoll") MED 1904-1912, No. 1021; Austrian State Archives OeStA/Archive of the Republic´AdR/Enteignungs- und Restitutionsangelegenheiten/Hilfsfonds/Abgeltungsfonds 5444, /FLD 4585, /VVSt/Gew. 2454; Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv: 1.3.2.119.A41 C 1325, Bezirk: 1 und Historisches Meldearchiv; NÖ ÄRZTECHRONIK 1990; POSCH/STADLER 2005; POSCH 2009, 393; Lillian BERLINER, And the Month Was May. A Memoir, iUniversity:Bloomington/IN 2009; REITER-ZATLOUKAL/SAUER 2024; information by courtesy of Dr. Barbara Sauer, Vienna 2015, Regina Thumser-Wöhs 2016, Carol Berlin 2017 and Dr. Gregor Gatscher-Riedl, Perchtoldsdorf 06/2020.

Herbert Posch